After months of debate, N.J. maintains status quo on guns

Gun-rights groups staged rallies, organized letter-writing campaigns and packed hearings with supporters, hoping to derail a series of gun-control measures as they worked their way through the Legislature this spring.

At the same time, advocates for stricter gun-control crisscrossed New Jersey warning of a surge in crime and calling attention to the harrowing stories of those who had fallen victim to gun violence.

And yet after months of debate that followed the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut last December, advocates on both sides of the issue agree, New Jersey ended up largely where it began, with no major new restrictions on firearms or changes to the process for buying them.

Governor Christie vetoed bills in August that would have banned the sale of .50-caliber weapons and overhauled the gun purchase permitting process. A proposed new restriction on magazine capacity never even made it out of the state Senate.

Christie did sign his own package of laws last month that, among other things, increased penalties for gun traffickers and illegally transferring a firearm to a minor. But the defeat of the three other measures was a major victory for gun-rights advocates, who faced an uphill battle in a state where non-gun-owners outnumber gun owners 7-1.

There is a difference of opinion about who or what is responsible for the bills’ defeat. Gun owners say they can draw a direct line from their lobbying to Christie’s vetoes. Gun-control advocates argue that the outcome was largely determined by forces outside the state, with the Republican governor driven more by his presidential ambitions than by arguments from New Jersey residents.

The Democratic governors of New York and Connecticut, in contrast, moved swiftly to implement new gun restrictions in the months after the Newtown shooting.

New York became the first state to modify its gun laws after the massacre when Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a package of measures in January that expanded the state’s ban on assault weapons, reduced the size of legal gun magazines to seven rounds from 10 and made it more difficult for mentally ill residents to obtain firearms.

In April, Gov. Dannel Malloy of Connecticut signed into law a series of measures that added more than 100 types of firearms to the state’s assault-weapons ban, established eligibility rules for the purchase of ammunition and created what state officials said was the country’s first dangerous weapons registry.

Though similar measures were proposed in New Jersey, few have become law.

For decades New Jersey had led the nation in passing new gun safety laws, including some of the first restrictions on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

“I think it’s safe to say New York has pulled ahead of New Jersey because its new legislation was so comprehensive,” said Laura Cutilletta, senior staff attorney with the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which ranks gun laws nationally.

Stepped-up campaign

Gun-rights groups credited a vocal campaign against new regulations that they embarked on last winter as the debate over how New Jersey should respond to the Newtown shooting heated up in Trenton.

Frank Jack Fiamingo, the president of one of the state’s most active pro-gun groups, the New Jersey Second Amendment Society, said membership has grown “precipitously” since the debate began. He declined to give specifics, but the group turned out hundreds of supporters when its leaders thought that a large showing would help its cause.

At one committee hearing in February, opponents of the gun-control proposals spilled into two overflow rooms, where they listened for more than seven hours as gun owners lined up to speak against the legislation.

Earlier that month, hundreds gathered outside the State House for a rally opposing any new gun laws. Frustrated with the responses from politicians, the Second Amendment Society also hosted a series of seminars to teach its supporters how to run for office.

Fiamingo and other leaders of the society encouraged members to send emails, faxes and Twitter messages to elected officials, and they said hundreds did.

Still, the pro-gun groups knew they had their work cut out for them. Polls consistently show strong support in New Jersey for new gun laws even though the state already has some of the strictest firearms regulations in the country.

A Quinnipiac University poll released in January found that 58 percent of New Jersey voters wanted stricter gun laws. Eight percent said state laws should be less strict, and 29 percent favored keeping the laws the same. Signs some, not others

Eventually, on Aug. 8, Christie signed 10 firearms bills. In addition to increasing criminal penalties for gun trafficking and for transferring a gun to a minor; they allow police officers to impound cars used in gun trafficking; eliminated the public’s right to access firearm ownership records; and prohibited people on the federal terrorist watch list from obtaining a firearms identification card or buying a handgun. The measures also require that New Jersey submit mental-health records to the federal background check system; declare violence a public health crisis and establish a study commission on violence; and provide a 180-day amnesty period for people to turn in illegal weapons.

The governor deferred action for more than a week on several more controversial proposals. Ultimately, on Aug. 16, he vetoed legislation that would have banned sales of Barrett .50-caliber firearms and a bill, which Democrats considered the centerpiece of their gun-control package, that would have created a so-called smart card to overhaul the way New Jersey issues firearm identification cards. The bill also would have required a firearm identification card to buy ammunition and mandated safety training for new gun owners. Christie said the smart card was technologically unworkable and that the training class should be replaced with a pamphlet.

After he issued the vetoes, Christie declined to answer questions about his motivations. He directed reporters to statements accompanying the vetoes that laid out policy-based explanations for each decision.

A bill that proposed to limit magazine capacity to 10 rounds, down from the current 15, passed the Assembly but never made it through the Senate.

While pro-gun groups opposed several of the bills that were signed into law — most notably the terror watch list measure, which they feared could deprive citizens of their right to buy a firearm without affording them due process — gun advocates won all of their major battles.

“In general, we’re pleased with the way things went,” Fiamingo said. “What we’re not pleased with, though, is that this was an issue in the first place. Why should the shootings in Connecticut have had anything whatsoever to do with the implementation of stricter firearms laws on legal gun owners in New Jersey?”

In addition to questioning the impetus for the gun debate, Fiamingo said he doubts the legitimacy of polls that show wide majorities of New Jerseyans supporting tougher firearms laws. He said the surveys are “manipulated,” citing legislative committee hearings where hundreds of gun owners turned out but which few gun control advocates attended.

“Why was there nobody there but us?” he said. “If the people of New Jersey are so incensed, so concerned about the law-abiding gun owners and wanted to further restrict the law-abiding firearms owner, they would have been there.”

But Bryan Miller, executive director of Heeding God’s Call, a group that favors stricter gun-control measures, dismissed the idea that the number of citizens at legislative hearings was indicative of public opinion statewide, or that it swayed politicians in their votes.

“I think putting 150 people in a hearing room to yell at legislators makes no difference at all,” Miller said, adding that “the only people who doubt the efficacy or the truth of polls are people who don’t get good numbers.”

But more important than polls in the governor’s decision to veto the two most controversial gun bills, Miller said, were Christie’s presumed plans to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, which would require him to win GOP primaries in states across the nation.

“I don’t think that he just made an independent decision without thinking about his future,” Miller said. “It’s clear he didn’t pay any attention to what New Jerseyans wanted, so he must be paying attention to what people outside of New Jersey want.”

Christie’s Democratic challenger, state Sen. Barbara Buono of Middlesex County, jumped on that attack after Christie announced his vetoes.

“He has made his priorities clear — the wishes of right-wing, fringe Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire are more important than protecting children and families in the Garden State,” she said in a statement at the time.

The Second Amendment Society and other gun-rights groups were not shy about using Christie’s political ambitions to try to pressure him.

“We had people from all over the country who contacted the governor … indicating that they would not consider him as a candidate that they could vote for if he didn’t veto these bills,” Fiamingo said.